Growing mechanization and rationalization have taken place in recent years in the goods transport sector with the aim of trying to reduce the costs of packaging transportation and storage of goods. A not unimportant portion of these costs stems from the production, handling, storage, return and repair of pallets. Hitherto, the most common material for manufacturing standardized pallets has been wood, for which reason wooden pallets are also termed “conventional pallets” below.
Conventional pallets are expensive to produce and therefore have to be reused several times before they can be discarded, which is why pallets are returned to the goods carrier, goods supplier or to the pallet manufacturer following delivery of the goods to the goods recipient. Owing to their considerable weight and bulky volume, and the frequent need for repair caused by rough handling of the pallets, substantial transportation and maintenance costs arise. An attempt has therefore been made to replace the conventional pallets of wood generally used with pallets of a simplified construction and lower prices, which do not need to be returned and reused, i.e. single-use pallets.
A number of such cheaper and lighter pallet constructions are now on the market, formed for example from wood fibre, plastic or combinations of said materials. Lightweight pallets produced from paper, pasteboard and/or cardboard are also available, usually comprising several layers, which are glued to one another, constituting a cheaper, lighter alternative, which is easier to handle than conventional pallets produced from wood. Nevertheless, neither said lightweight pallets nor any other pallet of the single-use type have gained any appreciable use.
The reason for this is probably that the lightweight pallet has not yet been priced sufficiently advantageously in relation to its somewhat poorer technical attributes, such as its lower bearing capacity, poorer resistance to moisture and external damage, for example when the pallets are handled by lifting forks, other than for special purposes. The fact also that the cost of transporting assembled lightweight pallets is normally not much lower than the cost of transporting normal wooded pallets, taking the number of pallets actually delivered into account, is probably a further important reason for the low use of lightweight pallets. This is due to the fact that the assembled lightweight pallets take up essentially the same volume as the normal wooden pallets. To reduce the transportation volume for the new, as yet unused lightweight pallets, these are normally sent to the users in the dismantled state, i.e. in the form of prefabricated partial blanks for final assembly on the spot. Since up to now the recipient has lacked suitable pallet assembly machines, local assembly of pallets has hitherto always taken place more or less entirely manually, with disadvantageously long assembly times per pallet as a result. Even in the case of factory assembly of pallets, prior to delivery to the user, the available assembly aids have been severely limited. Since the technical attributes of the lightweight pallet have been improved considerably recently, so that they now meet the present functional requirements perfectly, at least in relation to their low price, the explicit wishes or parties concerned remain for a process for assembling lightweight pallets which is a least considerably more automated.